UK’s Central Bank Terminates Plans to Roll Out its Own Digital Currency

Just days after the Bank of England, the United Kingdom’s central bank, disclosed to the public that one of its many research divisions was looking into unveiling a cryptocurrency that is tied to pounds sterling, which is the UK’s monetary unit, the bank disclosed that it had terminated all plans to roll out its very own virtual currency.

Some might be disappointed by this news, and the central bank stated that the plans were dropped due to certain concerns about the impact that the currency would have on the UK’s financial system. More specifically, the Bank of England expressed fear that having a cryptocurrency linked to pounds sterling would mean that its customers would stop using their commercial bank accounts.

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The Bank of England isn’t necessarily wrong either. In fact, these reasons are pretty justifiable. Essentially, if the mass market moves to the cryptocurrency, there is a high chance that the commercial banks will run out of money to lend, which would, according to the BoE, cause “turbulence” in the UK financial economy.

The popularity of cryptocurrency has skyrocketed over the course of the past year, and it has caused a number of debates. While Bitcoin found itself in a slump the last couple weeks of 2017, despite hitting a record-high on December 10, people still seem to be interested in the cryptocurrency sector and all of the currencies it has to offer, even if they can be volatile at times.

Meanwhile, there are a few investors against the whole concept, and while it might seem like the Bank of England taken agrees based on its decision to cancel plans to launch its own digital currency, keep in mind the bank didn’t cite problems with the sector as its reason. It seems the bank is just trying to protect itself from falling under the spectrum as it knows just how popular their digital currency would be, and they don’t want to divert attention from their bank accounts.

In today’s edition of crypto news, we’ll cover OKEX’s latest addition to its customer-to-customer platform and IBM’s new blockchain patents. Crypto news has been a bit slow this week, in regards to big announcements but …